Users Guide to USAID/Washington Health Programs

Introduction to USAID
Working in Partnership to Achieve Shared Health Goals
The development landscape has evolved dramatically over the last two decades. The clearest sign of
this evolution is the sheer number of development actors; as of 2011, there were 263 multilateral
agencies and 197 bilateral agencies through which official government development assistance flows.
Assistance from “emerging donor” nations such as China, India, Brazil, and the Gulf states is growing rapidly.
This is all in addition to the thousands of non-governmental organizations both for-profit and
not-for-profit private corporations, private foundations, local businesses, and other organizations working in
the developing world.
The policy context for USAID partnering is global and embraces principles expressed in the Paris Declaration
for Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action; it is national as set forth in the Presidential
Policy Directive on Global Development and the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review
(QDDR); it is USAID-wide as set forth in the USAID Policy Framework and USAID Forward; and finally
it is health specific in that it embraces the GHI Principles.
USAID’s Bureau for Global Health engages with a multitude of development partners – in the public sector
this includes other bilateral donor governments, multilateral government entities, international financial institutions,
other USG agencies, United Nations organizations, and host country governments themselves. In
the private sector, our partners include foundations, corporations, contractors, universities, and a variety of
non-governmental organizations large and small, global and local, including those whose members are from
both public and private sectors including Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), Global
Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Roll Back Malaria
(RBM), Stop TB Partnership (STOP TB), Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), Reproductive
Maternal and Newborn Health (RMNH), and Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health
(PMNCH) among others.
Through partnering, we leverage the resources of others, be they financial, technical/programmatic, or political.
We coordinate with other partners because we believe that by acting together we can achieve more
than each of us can operating independently. We coordinate with others because we hope to achieve:
• Increased effectiveness of health aid/programming
• Increased efficiency of health aid/programming
• Increased scalability of priority health interventions
• Increased ownership by host country governments (sustainability)
Roles for the Bureau for Global Health: The funds allocated to the Bureau for Global Health address
the same Agency goals and objectives as Mission funds, but are used in ways appropriate for a central,
functional bureau. These uses include:
• Providing technical leadership in responding to new global health challenges
• Partnering strategically with a wide range of actors
• Accelerating the development and application of innovation, science, and technology
• Scaling up evidence-based, equitable, and locally-adapted health solutions
• Strengthening local health system capacity to support partner countries’ leadership of health policies,
strategies, and actions
• Promoting gender equality and female empowerment
• Working efficiently and being effective stewards of public trust and resources
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